How some resistant bacteria can even eat antibiotics as food

Some bacteria are capable of not just resisting antibiotics, but actively feeding on them too. Now researchers have figured out how they do this.

Ten years ago, Gautam Dantas at Washington University in St Louis and his colleagues discovered that some bacteria could eat antibiotics by accident. As part of an experiment, they were growing soil bacteria in the presence of penicillin, expecting that this would stop the bacteria from growing.

“But we saw exceptional growth on antibiotics,” says Dantas, whose team found that some strains were around …